Chapter Four: What Comes Off, What Doesn’t (Eliza)

The creek was narrow and unremarkable, which made it perfect.

It slid through the trees with the quiet determination of something that had learned not to interfere. Water moved where it always had, over stones worn smooth by repetition older than any war. It did not rush. It did not hesitate. It did not care what had happened an hour ago.

Mercy led us to it without comment, as if this had always been the next step. Thomas followed, one hand pressed to his injured arm, his breathing controlled but tight. I trailed behind them, my legs trembling now that the immediate demand for motion had lifted.

Adrenaline is a liar. It convinces you that you are capable of anything and then abandons you without apology.

“Sit,” Mercy said, gesturing to a flat stone at the water’s edge.

Thomas shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“You are bleeding,” she replied. “Sit.”

He did.

That alone told me how close he’d come to not listening at all.

I knelt at the creek and plunged my hands into the water. The cold bit immediately, sharp enough to make me hiss. Blood loosened from my skin in pale, drifting ribbons, dissolving as if it had never belonged to me in the first place.

Some of it hadn’t.

I scrubbed harder than necessary, nails scraping against my palms, as if I could scour the memory out with the stain. The water clouded and cleared and clouded again, endlessly accommodating.

Behind me, Thomas exhaled slowly.

“Don’t do that,” he said.

I didn’t look up. “Do what.”

“Punish yourself,” he replied.

I laughed, short and brittle. “I’m just washing my hands.”

Mercy snorted softly. “No one scrubs that hard unless they’re arguing with themselves.”

I finally looked up.

Thomas’s sleeve was torn clean through, dark with blood. The graze wasn’t deep, but it had bled freely, the way shallow wounds do when they want attention. His jaw was tight, his posture rigid with the effort of not making a spectacle of pain.

I crossed the creek and knelt in front of him.

“You don’t have to,” he said immediately.

“I know,” I replied. “I’m choosing to.”

That phrasing made him still.

I rinsed my hands again, then gently took his arm. He didn’t pull away. His skin was warm beneath my fingers, solid, indisputably present. I focused on that sensation, grounding myself in it the way Mercy had taught me to ground in breath or touch or repetition.

The blood came away easily.

Too easily.

I cleaned the wound carefully, aware of Mercy watching from a distance. She didn’t interfere. She never did when it mattered most. Witchcraft, I was beginning to understand, was largely about knowing when not to act.

Thomas watched my hands with quiet intensity.

“You did something back there,” he said, not accusatory, not curious. Certain.

“Yes.”

“On purpose.”

“Yes.”

“Again.”

I hesitated, then nodded.

He was silent for a long moment. Then, “Did it hurt.”

The question caught me off guard.

“Not like that,” I said slowly. “It’s not pain. It’s pressure. Like time leaning on you to see if you’ll fold.”

Mercy spoke from behind us. “And she didn’t.”

“I shouldn’t have,” I said, sharply. “You warned me.”

“I always warn,” Mercy replied calmly. “You always pull anyway.”

Thomas frowned. “Pull what.”

“The moment,” Mercy said. “She altered it.”

His gaze snapped back to me. “Altered how.”

I tied a strip of clean cloth around his arm, fingers steady despite the tremor in my chest. “I… refused the version where you died.”

That landed heavily.

He swallowed. “And that was supposed to happen.”

“Yes.”

Silence pressed in around us, thick and uncomfortable. The creek murmured on, unbothered by our revelations.

“Why me,” he asked finally.

I met his eyes. “Because you don’t move when time does.”

Mercy hummed softly. “Anchors rarely know they are anchors.”

Thomas’s mouth tightened. “That sounds like a polite word for target.”

“It can be both,” Mercy said.

I finished tying the bandage and pulled my hands back, suddenly unsure what to do with them. Blood was gone from my skin, but the memory of it lingered, phantom and insistent.

“Does it always repeat,” Thomas asked me quietly. “The battle.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “It revisits. Adjusts. Like it’s searching for the cleanest version.”

“And if it finds one,” he pressed.

I didn’t answer.

Mercy did. “Then it settles.”

That word made my stomach drop.

I stood and rinsed my hands again, slower this time. The water was clear now, but my reflection wavered in it, distorted by movement. I barely recognized myself. Dirt streaked my face. My eyes looked too bright, too alert, like someone who had learned something irreversible.

“You saved my life,” Thomas said.

I shook my head. “I delayed the worst outcome.”

“That’s still saving,” he insisted.

Mercy rose and came closer, her skirts whispering against the stones. “Listen to me, both of you,” she said. “Time does not appreciate being contradicted. It tolerates negotiation. It punishes defiance.”

I met her gaze. “What’s the punishment.”

Her eyes flicked briefly to the trees, then back to me. “Interest.”

The word chilled me.

“We should move,” she added. “Water makes things feel finished. They rarely are.”

Thomas stood carefully, testing his arm. He winced but nodded. “I can walk.”

“I know,” Mercy said. “You always can.”

We left the creek behind, its surface already forgetting us. The forest closed in again, shadows lengthening as the day crept toward evening. The battle sounds were distant now, muted, as if time itself were drawing a veil.

As we walked, Thomas fell into step beside me.

“You don’t have to explain everything,” he said quietly. “But you should know this.”

I looked at him.

“I don’t stay because I don’t know how to leave,” he continued. “I stay because I decide to.”

Something in my chest loosened and tightened at the same time.

“That makes this worse,” I said.

He smiled faintly. “So I’ve been told.”

Mercy watched us from ahead, her posture calm, her steps measured. She did not look back.

I glanced down at my hands one last time. Clean. Empty. Innocent-looking.

Some things wash away.

Some things sink in.

And as we moved deeper into the trees, away from the creek and toward whatever time was preparing next, I understood with quiet certainty that nothing I had done would ever truly come off.

Not from me.

Not from the ground that remembered.

Not from time, which had begun to count.